Educating Hopes

Acknowledging the negative impact poverty and violence can have on the educational process, I explore ways in which a pragmatic interpretation of hope can guide us in formulating preventive and responsive measures that are not intrusive on the normal curriculum. I draw on key pragmatic ideas presented by John Dewey to emphasize the habits central to a pragmatic theory of hope. Equally important is the notion of a community of hope that fosters the development of hope’s habits. A hopeful pedagogy enables us to fund students with habits that help them resist the disconnection and despair that can come from living and learning amid impoverished or violent conditions. I argue that teachers can emphasize hope’s relevance to achieving the goals of the curriculum; they can also promote students’ self-knowledge through personal narratives that identify past accomplishments and explore possible means to desired goods. To begin ameliorating the tenacious conditions that foster poverty and violence, we need to look beyond the confines of the classroom and school to the resources and coordinated efforts made possible by the larger community. A pragmatic interpretation thus focuses our attention on individual and communal habits that help us secure desired goods. My discussion demonstrates at least some of the ways in which hope is a valuable resource for actively responding to circumstances that impede the educational process.     

Chapter 10. Despite False Hopes,Forced Transition Creates Growth

SUMMARY

In this chapter, I discuss how each of six stages applied to the reported experiences of the volunteers, drawing examples from field logs and interviews and the data reflected in the previous chapters.     

Feminism and Feminist Therapy: Lessons From the Past and Hopes for the Future

Feminist therapy incorporates the psychology of women (e.g., J. B. Miller, 1976), developmental research (e.g., C. Gilligan, 1982), cognitive‐behavioral techniques (J. Worell & P. Remer, 1992), multicultural awareness (L. Comas‐Diaz & B. Greene, 1994), and social activism (L. S. Brown, 1994) in a coherent theoretical and therapeutic package. It is an orientation that is effective in various venues and with diverse populations. In this article, the authors trace the relevant historical aspects of the orientation along with implications for practice, critiques, and trends.     

European Bioethics II--Disparate Hopes and Fears: An Introduction

This introduction supplies further bearing points for the conceptualmap, which the introduction to the previous issue on Europeanbioethics (2008/1) had provided for sorting out the variousdimension in which the essays collected in these issues resembleand differ from each other. Special attention is devoted tocommunication, as diverse Christianities attend to differentpurposes, problems, and opportunities for normatively engaging(persuading, influencing, ruling, opposing, and converting)their surrounding secularized cultures. These differences reflectincompatible ways of conceiving Christ's acts of healing, asthese provide a model for His disciples' bioethics. These differencesalso reflect diversely rationalist and noetic epistemologies.The subtext concerns the haunting question about the enduringsustainability of a specifically Christian bioethics in Europe.As Schotsmans opts for a Roman Catholicism that is not recognizedas such by his Magisterium, as Muller transforms Protestantisminto a religiously nonhostile laicity, as Messer and Silva daBarbosa hope for the prophetic impact of communal "cities onthe hill," and as the Orthodox pursue the conversion of WesternEurope in Greek, Russian, and Rumanian, ongoing Divine miraclespresent the most realistic hope.     

Hopes and cautions in implementing Bayesian structural equation modeling

Muthén and Asparouhov (2012) have proposed and demonstrated an approach to model specification and estimation in structural equation modeling (SEM) using Bayesian methods. Their contribution builds on previous work in this area by (a) focusing on the translation of conventional SEM models into a Bayesian framework wherein parameters fixed at zero in a conventional model can be respecified using small-variance priors and (b) implementing their approach in software that is widely accessible. We recognize potential benefits for applied researchers as discussed by Muthén and Asparouhov, and we also see a tradeoff in that effective use of the proposed approach introduces increased demands in terms of expertise of users to navigate new complexities in model specification, parameter estimation, and evaluation of results. We also raise cautions regarding the issues of model modification and model fit. Although we see significant potential value in the use of Bayesian SEM, we also believe that effective use will require an awareness of these complexities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).